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Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul muwo_1408 580..596

Richard C. Taylor
Marquette University & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

W
hile the ontology of the soul is something to be dealt within philosophy, the
issue of the possibility of the post-mortem existence of the soul in the case of
human beings seems to require venturing beyond the strictly philosophical
works of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and into his religious writings. This is because claims
made by Averroes in religious or dialectical writings regarding the human soul and its
continuing existence after death have a role in the consideration of his ontology of soul.
This is particularly the case since he explicitly refused to allow for a theory of double
truth, one in religious matters and another in philosophy, thereby insisting implicitly that
on issues such as that of the existence of the afterlife there is a single truth in a doctrine
that can suitably be labeled the unity of truth.1 And in his self-professed religious treatise
Kitāb fas·l al-maqāl wa-taqrı̄r mā bayna al-sharı̄ ‘a wa-l-h·ikma min al-ittis·āl (The Book
of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Connection between the
Religious Law and Philosophy2) as well as in his dialectical Tahāfut al-tahāfut (The
Incoherence of the Incoherence)3 both perhaps written ca. 1179–81, Averroes expressly
states that the afterlife of the individual soul is a religious doctrine that must be affirmed,
although he also holds that its precise nature is a matter of considerable variation of
opinion.4 But there is much more to this issue.

1
For Averroes’s rejection of “double truth,” see Richard C. Taylor, “‘Truth does not contradict truth’:
Averroes and the Unity of Truth,” Topoi 19/1 (2000): 3–16.
2
Averroes. The Book of the Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection Between the Law and Wisdom
& Epistle Dedicatory, tr. Charles E. Butterworth. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2001).
Hereafter Fas·l al-maqāl. My rendering of the title follows A. El Ghannouchi, “Distinction et relation des
discours philosophique et religieux chez Ibn Rushd: Fasl al maqal ou la double verité,” in Averroes
(1126–1198) oder der Triumph des Rationalismus, Internationales Symposium anlässlich des 800.
Todestages des islamischen Philosophen, ed. R.G. Khoury (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter,
2002), 139–145; see 145.
3
Averroës. Tahafot at-tahafot, ed. Maurice Bouyges, S.J., ed. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1930.
English translation in Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), tr. Simon Van
Den Bergh, tr., 2 vol. (London: Luzac and Co., 1930). Hereafter Tahāfut al-tahāfut.
4
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 582; tr., 360. Also see Fas·l al-maqāl, 19, where interpretation is allowed for those
adept at demonstration, and 21, where diversity of opinion and even error are allowed to the learned
so long as the afterlife is not denied. Also see Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 583–86; tr., 361–62.
© 2012 Hartford Seminary.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148
USA.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2012.01408.x
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

Averroes also explains in detail in his Tahāfut al-tahāfut that his proper views are to
be found in his demonstrative, i.e. philosophical works, and not in dialectical works such
as his Tahāfut al-tahāfut,5 something also indicated in the Fas·l where he writes
regarding scriptural interpretation in cases of conflict with scientifically founded truths,
it is obligatory that interpretations be established only in books using demonstra-
tions. For if they are in books using demonstrations, no one but those adept in
demonstration will get at them. Whereas, if they are established in other than
demonstrative books with poetical and rhetorical or dialectical methods used in
them, as Abû Hamid [al-Ghazali] does, that is an error against the Law and against
wisdom.6

And in the most sophisticated of those philosophical works on the soul,7 his Short,
Middle and Long commentaries on De Anima of Aristotle, he sets out teachings on the
nature of the soul that are fully incompatible with his own claims for the existence of the
afterlife in the religious or dialectical works mentioned above. For in each of his
significantly differing philosophical accounts of the soul in those commentaries on the
De Anima his analyses of the nature and activities of the soul leave no room for personal
immortality or any other sort of continued existence on the part of individual human
substances. My task here, then, is not only to expound Averroes’s philosophical
teachings on the ontology of the soul but also to address at least tentatively the issue of
his religious views and also that of whether his principled rejection of double truth
remains cogent in this case.
In what follows I first show that in the three commentaries on the De Anima there
is no claim or reasoned account supporting the immortality of the soul and that the

5
“All this is the theory of the philosophers on this problem and in the way we have stated it here with
its proofs, it is a persuasive not a demonstrative statement. It is for you to inquire about these questions
in the places where they are treated in the books of demonstration . . . Nothing therefore of what we
have said in this book is a technical demonstrative proof; they are all non-technical statements, some
of them having greater persuasion than others, and it is in this spirit that what we have written here must
be understood.” Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 427–428; tr., 257–258. Translation slightly modified.
6
Fas·l al-maqāl, 21.
7
Two early works are worthy of brief mention. (i) The Commentary on the Parva Naturalia by
Averroes contains a teaching close to that of the Short Commentary and influenced by Ibn Bājja. See
Abū al-Walı̄d Ibn Rushd. Talkhı̄s Kitāb al-H · iss wa-l-Mah·sūs, Harry Blumberg (ed.) (Cambridge, MA:
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1972), 79–82; Averroes. Epitome of Parva Naturalia. Translated from
the Original Arabic and the Hebrew and Latin Versions, Harry Blumberg (trans.) (Cambridge, MA:
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1961), 46–48; Averrois Cordubensis compendia librorum Aristotelis qui
Parva Naturalia vocantur, A.L. Shields and H. Blumberg (eds.) (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy
of America,1949), 109–115. (ii) The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect by
Ibn Rushd with the Commentary of Moses Narboni. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation,
Kalman P. Bland, ed. and trans. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982) seems to
be less mature and in a state of development. There he holds for a knowing conjunction of the human
intellect with the Agent Intellect (52–53) and later speaks of a human being and “the attribute and form
by which he is immortal” (103) but his teaching on the ontology of the soul is unclear. Averroes also
complains that Ibn Bājja is difficult to understand (109).
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

analyses of the soul by Averroes in these works provide no grounds for holding for the
soul’s continuing existence in the afterlife. I then proceed to consider the views of
Averroes on the soul and the afterlife in some religious and dialectical writings to set out
the issues at stake. Finally, I conclude with the consideration of several possibilities for
the conciliation of the very different statements of Averroes on the ontology of the soul
in the demonstrative philosophical writings and the religious or dialectical writings
examined in the present article.

1. The ontology of the soul in the commentaries on

De Anima
Averroes wrote three commentaries on the De Anima of Aristotle. His Short
Commentary or Mukhtas·ar was likely written ca. 1158–60 and has as its stated purpose
the establishment on the basis of the accounts of the philosophers of what he considers
to conform best with what has been explained in natural science and best fits with the
purpose of Aristotle.8 It does not follow the order of Aristotle’s book but rather consists
of a series of essays starting with the substance of the soul and then proceeding to its
powers of nutrition, sensation, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, common sense,
imagination, reason and appetite.
His Middle Commentary or Talkhı̄s·, completed and made available before 1186,
contains many texts identical to the Long Commentary or Sharh· based on an earlier
incomplete version of the Long Commentary.9 The Middle Commentary is a paraphras-
ing account of Aristotle’s De Anima in three parts in accord with the traditional division
of the Greek. However, the account of reason includes discussion which does not
precisely correspond to the text of Aristotle, including a paragraph10 just before his
paraphrase of De Anima 3.4 and 3.5 and a lengthy excursus11 following 3.5. It is in these

8
Talkhı̄s· Kitāb al-Nafs, ed. A. F. El-Ahwani (Cairo: Imprimerie Misr, 1950), 2; Epitome de Anima, ed. S.
Gómez Nogales (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto “Miguel Asín,”
Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1985), 5; La Psicología de Averroes. Comentario al Libro sobre el
alma de Aristóteles, tr. S. Gómez Nogales (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia,
1987), 99.
9
See Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Cordoba. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle, tr. R. C. Taylor,
Th.-A. Druart, subeditor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), xxix–xxxiii. Hereafter Long
Commentary. Also see C. Sirat and M. Geoffroy, L’original arabe du Grand Commentaire d’Averroes au
De anima d’Aristote. Prémices d’édition (Paris: J. Vrin, 2005); and R. Glasner, “Review of Averroes.
Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text with English
Translation, Notes and Introduction, A. L. Ivry.” In Aestimatio 1 (2004): 57–61. Glasner’s work
established the date of the Long Commentary on the De Anima and that it was the first of the long
commentaries.
10
Averroes. Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text with
English Translation, Notes and Introduction, ed. & tr. A. L. Ivry (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University
Press, 2002), 109, (278). Hereafter Middle Commentary.
11
Middle Commentary, 110–112, (281–285).
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

additional materials that Averroes rejects his account in the Short Commentary and
sketches a new understanding of the power of reason and the human soul. The Middle
Commentary has no preface indicating the purpose of the work, but it is generally
assumed that the middle commentaries were composed at the request of the caliph, Abū
Ya‘qūb Yūsuf, subsequent to introduction to the caliph by Ibn T·ufayl.12
The Long Commentary on the De Anima, extant in Arabic only in fragments and the
lone commentary on the soul by Averroes translated into Latin, is a lengthy work
containing the complete De Anima of Aristotle with detailed commentary passage by
passage. While Averroes himself says that this was completed in 1186 as the first of his
long commentaries,13 it is unknown when he commenced the Long Commentary on the
De Anima. Still, it has been established that an early version was the likely source for
some identical texts found in the Middle Commentary and also found in an important
Arabic manuscript written in Hebrew characters.14 The version of the text represented by
the Latin translation is generally taken to be Averroes’s mature and final understanding
of the soul and intellect since its new doctrine of soul and intellect is referred to in his
late Long Commentary on the Metaphysics15 and for other reasons.16 Like the Middle
Commentary, the Long Commentary on the De Anima has no preface explaining the
work’s purpose and structure. However, unlike the Middle Commentary, the Long
Commentary extends Book 2 to the end of the traditional 3.3 and starts Book 3 at De
Anima 3.4, the beginning of the detailed account of intellect.
The teaching on the soul in all three of these philosophical commentaries depends
on the same starting point of reasoning, namely, Aristotle’s definition of soul crafted in
De Anima 2.1 where Aristotle reaches the conclusion that the soul is the first actuality of
a natural body having organs (412b5). In each commentary Averroes has to address the
issue raised by Aristotle as to whether the intellect and the power of theoretical
reasoning constitute a distinct kind of soul peculiar to human beings which may be
separate, as what is immortal is separate from what is perishable (De Anima 2.2,
413b25–27). Aristotle himself questions the value of a universal definition of soul (De
Anima 2.3, 414b20–28), apparently prompted by the problem of the power of theoretical
reasoning (415a8–13). This is because Aristotle will contend in De Anima 3.4 that the
intellect must have a receptivity but also be uncontaminated and unmixed with body —
and so immaterial — in order that it can be the place of forms (429a13–30). He then goes
on to state that intellect is separate (429b6) and simple (429b23 ff.) and to imply strongly
that it is the immaterial subject for the understood forms (429b22, 429b 23–430a9) which
Averroes will call intelligibles in act. For Averroes the different positions he takes in the

12
Middle Commentary, xiv.
13
See Glasner cited in note 9.
14
See Sirat and Geoffroy cited in note 9; Long Commentary, xxviii–xxxiii; l–li.
15
Long Commentary, lii.
16
Long Commentary, l–li.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

three commentaries each hinges on consideration of just what is the nature of

intelligibles in act and into what sort of subject they may be received.17

1.1. The Short Commentary on the De Anima

The power of imagination plays a very special role in Averroes’s first commentary on
the De Anima. First, for all animals it contributes to well being by playing an essential
part of the process by which external reality is apprehended, a process involving
impressions received by the external senses and affecting the common sense. From this
there come about in the imaginative power intentions which are the perfection or
realization of that power. Second, in the case of human beings alone, Averroes holds, the
imaginative power plays a distinctively different and higher role insofar as the still
particular forms or intentions that come to be in the individual human being’s
imagination become the subjects for intelligibles in act and so for the universal. For this
Averroes reasoned that the human soul’s power of imagination “is distinguished by the
fact that it does not need an organic instrument for its activity.”18 This is because in this
work Averroes conceives the material intellect, that is, the power receptive of the
intelligibles in act in the soul that make possible human intellectual understanding, to
exist in the individual human being as a disposition belonging to the forms in the human
imagination.
Following Aristotle’s account that expressly stated that the receptive and active
powers of intellect must be “in the soul” (De Anima 3.5, 430a13–14), Averroes explained
that “the material intellect, insofar as it is material, needs necessarily for its existence that
there be here an intellect existing eternally in act,”19 scil. the Agent Intellect. The material
intellect does not receive the intelligibles in potency found in the imagination as images
subsequent to the reception of impressions on the external senses and the production of
intentional forms by the common sense. Rather, these have to be raised from the mode
of being of particulars intelligible in potency to the mode of being of intelligibles in act
to be received in the material intellect. For this the separately existing Agent Intellect is

17
I also indicate the importance of these two considerations in “Intelligibles in act in Averroes,” in
Averroès et les averroïsmes juif et latin. Actes du colloque tenu à Paris, 16–18 juin 2005, ed. J.-B. Brenet
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 111–140; and “Themistius and the Development of Averroes’ Noetics,” in
Soul and Mind. Medieval Perspectives on Aristotle’s De Anima. Âme et Intellect. Perspectives antiques et
médiévales sur le De Anima d’Aristote. Proceedings of the De Wulf-Mansion Centre Jubilee Conference
(Louvain-la-Neuve — Leuven 14–17 February 2007), J.-M. Counet & R. L. Friedman, ed. (Leuven:
Peeters, forthcoming) (Philosophes Médiévaux, LII).
18
Short Commentary (1950), 74.9–10; (1985), 108.14–15; (1987), 197.
19
Short Commentary (1950), 88.14–16; (1985), 126.17–127.1; (1987), 212. In his Short Commentary on
the Parva Naturalia, Averroes seems to set forth a similar doctrine. See Averrois Cordubensis
Compendia Librorum Aristotelis Qui Parva Naturalia Vocantur, (1949), 109–110; Averroes. Epitome of
Parva Naturalia. Translated from the Original Arabic and the Hebrew and Latin Versions, (1961), 46;
Abū al-Walı̄d Ibn Rushd. Talkhı̄s Kitāb al-H · iss wa-l-Mah·sūs, (1972), 79.7–12.
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

required to be present in the human being as “form for us”20 “uniting and conjoining”21
with the human soul to bring about the higher mode of being of intelligibles in act so that
they could be received into the material intellect for intellectual understanding. In his
own version of an account inspired in part by Ibn Bājja and in part by Alexander of
Aphrodisias,22 Averroes understood the term “material intellect” not to denote properly
an intellect — since intellect as intellect is necessarily something in act and separate —
but rather to denote a receptive disposition (isti‘dād) having as its subject the forms
existing in the human imagination.23 In this way the imagination — which Averroes
thought not to be a wholly bodily power, at least in the case of human beings — is able
to serve as substrate or foundation for a disposition which makes possible the
understanding of intelligibles in act.24 That is, the intellectual power existing in each
understanding human being called “the material intellect” cannot literally be an intellect
since an intellect as such is not a potency nor can it literally be material since matter
receives an actuality only as a particular; hence, since it is a disposition actualized in
human knowing, it remains for it to be attached to the forms of the imagination as a
disposition by which human understanding takes place. Regarding this Averroes writes,
Since it has been made evident that these intelligibles are generated, it is necessary
that there be a disposition which precedes them. And since the disposition is
something which is not separate, it is necessary that it exist in a subject. It is not
possible for this subject to be a body according to what has been made evident
regarding these intelligibles not being material in the way in which bodily forms
are material. It is also not possible that it be an intellect, since it is something in
potency, for there is not anything in it in act of that for which it is a potency. Since
this is so, then the subject for this disposition must be a soul. And there is nothing
evident here closer to being the subject of these intelligibles among the powers of
the soul than the forms of the imagination. Since it has been made evident that [the
intelligibles] exist only as dependent on [the forms of the imagination] and that [the
intelligibles] exist with [the forms of the imagination] and perish with their
perishing, then the disposition which is in the forms of the imagination for
receiving the intelligibles is the first material intellect.25

In this analysis Averroes does not provide all the details and perhaps is not fully
coherent, but he does point clearly to the consequence that the individual human soul
is itself perishable on this account. For, while imagination is common to animals (and he
says of human imagination that it “is distinguished by the fact that it does not need an
organic instrument for its activity,” as noted earlier), it is nevertheless the case that the
human imagination is a particular power belonging to the individual human being and

20
Short Commentary (1950), 89.3–6; (1985), 127.7–10; (1987), 212.
21
Short Commentary (1950), 89.6–7; (1985), 127.10–11; (1987), 213.
22
See Long Commentary, introduction, xxv–xxviii.
23
Short Commentary (1950), 83.11–12; (1985), 120.13; (1987), 206.
24
Short Commentary (1950), 86.5–15; (1985), 124.1–10; (1987), 209.
25
Short Commentary (1950), 86.5–15; (1985), 124.1–10; (1987), 209.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

is not separate immaterial intellect. To that extent, the power of imagination is as

perishable as is the body of the human being to whom it belongs. And no argument for
the immortality of the soul can be made through appeal to the immaterial reception of
intelligibles in act into an essential power of the soul, since Averroes has said that the
material intellect is not literally intellect but is rather a disposition of the forms in the
imagination. Precisely how this account allows for human intellectual understanding
Averroes does not fully explain in this work, something not surprising since, as we shall
see, he rejects this account in his later De Anima commentaries. However, what is clear
on this account is that the imagination is dependent upon the soul, which is an actuality
of the body, and that it and also the disposition called “material intellect” dependent
upon it, perish with the perishing of the human body. Hence, there is no provision or
rational argumentation supportive of post-mortem existence of individual human beings
in the Short Commentary on the De Anima.26

1.2. The Middle Commentary on the De Anima

For the most part the Middle Commentary consists of a paraphrasing account of
Aristotle’s De Anima. Here Averroes sets forth a view of the Agent Intellect similar to that
of the Short Commentary insofar as the constitution of the human intellect involves a
composition of the individual human material intellect and the shared Agent Intellect
with this latter coming to be “in” human beings as “form for us”.27 It is through the
intellectual abstractive power of the Agent Intellect that individual human beings are
able to come to understand the worldly essences presented to the internal senses
through sense perception.
It is clear that, in one respect, this intellect is an agent and, in another, it is form for
us (s·ūrah la-nā), since the generation of intelligibles is a product of our will. When
we want to think something, we do so, our thinking it being nothing other than,
first, bringing the intelligible forth and, second, receiving it. The individual
intentions in the imaginative faculty are they that stand in relation to the intellect
as potential colors do to light. That is, this intellect renders them actual intelligibles
after their having been intelligible in potentiality. It is clear, from the nature of this
intellect — which, in one respect, is form for us (s·ūrah la-nā) and, in another, is
the agent for the intelligibles — that it is separable and neither generable nor
corruptible, for that which acts is always superior to that which is acted upon, and
the principle is superior to the matter. The intelligent and intelligible aspects of this
intellect are essentially the same thing, since it does not think anything external to
its essence. There must be an Agent Intellect here, since that which actualizes the
intellect has to be an intellect, the agent endowing only that which resembles what
is in its substance.28

26
For a more detailed analysis, see my forthcoming article cited in note 17.
27
Middle Commentary, 116 (297–8).
28
Middle Commentary, 116 (297).
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

This understanding takes place through the reception of intelligibles in act into the
receptive material intellect. However, the conception of the material intellect in this work
is very different from that of the Short Commentary.
Averroes provides a new analysis of the nature of the material intellect as a subject
for intelligibles in act and of its relationship to the human soul in his account of rational
power corresponding to De Anima 3.4–8. Disregarding the Short Commentary’s
understanding of the material intellect as identified with a disposition of the forms in the
imagination, Averroes insists that as intellect the material intellect “cannot be mixed with
the subject in which it is found” since if that were so “the forms of things would not exist
in the intellect as they really are — that is, the forms existing in the intellect would be
changed into forms different from the actual forms. If, therefore, the nature of the
intellect is to receive the forms of things which have retained their natures, it is necessary
that it be a faculty unmixed with any form whatsoever.”29 That is, the nature of
intellectually understood intelligibles in act dictates that they be received into a subject
that is unmixed with the body or powers of a body or any other form. Consequently, the
material intellect cannot be a disposition of the forms of the imagination but must rather
be immaterial intellect and yet also receptive. Averroes writes,
Both approaches to the material intellect have thus been explained to you — that
of Alexander and that of the others — and it will have become clear to you that the
truth, which is the approach of Aristotle, is a combination of both views, in the
manner we have mentioned. For, by our position as stated, we are saved from
positing something separate in its substance as a certain disposition, positing
[instead] that the disposition found in it is not due to its [own] nature but due to
its conjunction with a substance which has this disposition essentially — namely,
man — while, in positing that something here is associated incidentally with this
disposition, we are saved from [considering] the intellect in potentiality as a
disposition only.30
That is, the material intellect is not merely a disposition attached to the forms of the
imagination but rather it is a disposition belonging to a human being who comes to be
knowing through the actualization in being of that disposition by the abstractive power
of the separate Agent Intellect.
But how is that attachment of an unmixed and immaterial power, the material
intellect, to the human being to be conceived?
For his understanding of the relationship of the human being to the material intellect
Averroes draws upon his understanding of celestial entities, namely, the bodies which
the souls are “in” and the intellects which are the causes of the movement of the celestial
bodies by their souls, as Marc Geoffroy has rightly pointed out.31 In the case of the eternal

29
Middle Commentary, 109 (278).
30
« »
Middle Commentary, 112 (285). Note that I change Ivry’s substantively separate for mufāriqan fı̄
jawhari-hi to “separate in its substance.”
31
Averroès. La Béatitude de l’âme. Éditions, traductions et études, ed. & tr. M. Geoffroy and C. Steel
(Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2001), 64–65, 71 ff.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

heavens the moving body and its soul are not composed hylomorphically as are
transitory sublunar beings. Rather, the soul is “in” the celestial body without forming a
single hylomorphic composite from the two, each of which is an eternal being. In the
case of humans, the material intellect is not literally “in” the body, the soul or the human
composed of the two since the material intellect must remain unmixed to be receptive
of intelligibles without distortion by pre-existing formalities. Hence, an individual
material intellect belongs to and exists “in” the human soul. To this extent, the power of
soul called material intellect has its existence and individuation through its relation to
and association with the individual soul existing in the body. Although Averroes chooses
not to draw the conclusion explicitly, it is clear the perishing of the composite of soul and
body also entails the loss of individualization and existence for the associated material
intellect. Hence, as was the case for the Short Commentary, here too in the Middle
Commentary there is no provision or rational argumentation supportive of post-mortem
existence of individual human beings. That is, in the Middle Commentary on the De
Anima the ontology of the soul and its powers entails that the human soul and intellect
perish with the death of the body.

1.3. The Long Commentary on the De Anima

Averroes again confronted the issue of the nature of intelligibles in act and the
character of a subject suitable for them for the sake of human intellectual understanding
in his last major work on the intellect, his Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle.
Critically reflecting on the teachings of Themistius in the latter’s Paraphrase of the De
Anima, Averroes brought his mind to bare a notion he had not dealt with at length in
either of the two earlier commentaries, namely, the unity of knowledge that makes
shared science and intersubjective intellectual discourse possible. In both of those works
Averroes held that each human being possesses his or her own personal material
intellect. In the Long Commentary, however, he adopts a view that he had explicitly
rejected in the Middle Commentary32 and that he had raised as worthy of further
consideration in a short work called Epistle 1 on Conjunction:33 the Material Intellect as
a single separate entity shared by all human beings. In forming this new understanding,
Averroes found the Paraphrase of the De Anima by Themistius a powerful stimulant.
In the Arabic text of Themistius Averroes read,

There need be no wonder that we all are as a group composites of what is in

potency and of what is in act. All of us whose existence is by virtue of this one are
referred back to a one which is the Agent Intellect. For if not this, then whence is
it that we possess known sciences in a shared way? And whence is it that the
understanding of the primary definitions and primary propositions is alike [for us

32
Middle Commentary, 111 (282).
33
Averroès. La Béatitude de l’âme, 210.
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

all] without learning? For it is right that, if we do not have one intellect in which we
all share, then we also do not have understanding of one another.34

This unity of intellect for the sake of “understanding of one another” Averroes
applied to his conception of human intellectual understanding to form his novel
understanding of the unity of the Material Intellect, a view inspired by his reading of
Themistius although not held by Themistius himself.35 For Averroes this understanding
of the Material Intellect satisfied the need for the unity of understanding on the part of
distinct human individuals since this entity is the repository of abstracted intelligibles in
act to which all particular acts of understanding and scientific discourse refer. This is
possible only insofar as the nature of the Material Intellect is such that it is a unique reality
constituting a distinct immaterial species so that intelligibles received are not particular-
ized as they would be were it to be truly material. Averroes was well aware of the
difficulty of asserting that something actual as immaterial intellect could be receptive, a
notion he labeled as “the problem of Theophrastus.” Nevertheless, to solve the complex
array of issues involved in accounting for the phenomenon of intellectual understanding
on the part of transitory human beings, Averroes crafted this new account explicitly
conscious of the metaphysical commitments entailed, something evident in his descrip-
tion of the material intellect as “a fourth kind of being” in addition to matter, form and
matter-form composites.36
With this new teaching Averroes held the familiar notion that individual human
beings employ the external senses and the common sense to produce intentions in the
imagination. These are then refined and stripped of the extraneous by the cogitative
power yielding denuded intentions placed in memory ready for transference from the
mode of being of particulars to the mode of being of intelligibles in act.37 This takes place
thanks both to the presence of the separate Agent Intellect “in the soul” as “form for us”
effecting the abstractive transference and to the presence of the Material Intellect “in the
soul” as well as the immaterial subject receptive of the intelligible now no longer in
potency as it was in the external and internal powers of the individual soul but instead
in act. For the individual human knower this yields the theoretical intellect as a positive
disposition of knowing (al-‘aql bi-l-malaka, intellectus in habitu) in the soul which

34
An Arabic Translation of Themistius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. C. Lyons
(Columbia, South Carolina, and Oxford, England, 1973), 188.17–189.4. This Arabic text, based on an
incomplete manuscript, is missing Greek 2–22 and some other passages. This corresponds to
Themistius, In Libros Aristotelis De Anima Paraphrasis, ed. R. Heinze (Berlin, G. Reimeri, Berlin, 1899)
[Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 5.3], 103.36–104.3. For an English translation of the Greek, see
Themistius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul, Todd, R. B., tr. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1996). Todd also translated
selections from the Greek text in Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect, Schroeder, F.
M., and Todd, R. B., tr. (Toronto, 1990). Cf. Averroes, Long Commentary, 411–412; tr., 328–9.
35
For more detailed discussion of this see my forthcoming article cited in note 17.
36
Long Commentary, 409; tr. 326.
37
The intention “is transferred in its mode of being from one order into another.” Long Commentary,
439; tr. 351.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

accounts for the human experience of knowing the intelligibles in act which Averroes
had reasoned could only exist in the Material Intellect, the shared immaterial subject of
intelligibles. In this teaching the presence of the two separate intellects “in the soul”
provides the connection between the individual knower’s cogitative power responsible
for human acts of will in making pre-noetic preparations for abstraction. The realization
of knowledge in that individual as the theoretical intellect coordinates with abstracted
intellectual content in the Material Intellect. In this way the individual human knower
can be called the subject of truth insofar as the individual provides the content intelligible
in potency which comes to exist as intelligible in act in the Material Intellect — the
subject of the existence of the intelligible in act — by way of the abstractive and elevating
power of the Agent Intellect.
The foregoing is important for the issue of the ontology of the soul since the
philosophical reasoning must be focused on the natures of the intelligibles in act and
natures of the subjects into which they are received. For Averroes human intellectual
understanding comes about when the two separate substances, the Agent Intellect and
the Material Intellect, are intrinsically present in the human soul by a form of sharing or
participation. But the human soul is the first actuality of a natural body having organs,
while the those intellects are separate from body. In light of this, Averroes determines
that the term soul is equivocal and that intellect is not properly part of the essence of the
human soul. Explaining his understanding of Aristotle, Averroes writes,
[I]t is better to say, and seems more to be true after investigation, that this is another
kind of soul and, if it is called a soul, it will be so equivocally. If the disposition of
intellect is such as this, then it must be possible for that alone of all the powers of
soul to be separated from the body and not to be corrupted by [the body’s]
corruption, just as the eternal is separated. This will be the case since sometimes
[the intellect] is not united with [the body] and sometimes it is united with it.38

That is, for a human being soul is the actuality of body responsible for the formation of
the hylomorphic composite. The rational part of soul or intellect is not properly soul as
form of the body; it can be called soul but only in a wholly equivocal sense. Intellect then
does not belong properly and per se to this hylomorphic composite in virtue of itself but
rather is only shared through the presence of the Agent Intellect and the Material Intellect
during the earthly life of the human individual. Hence, no argument for personal
immortality can be based on the per se presence of an intellectual — and thereby
immaterial — power of the soul fully intrinsic to each individual human. The
consequence is that, while the Agent Intellect, the Material Intellect, and also the human
species can be reasoned to be eternally in existence,39 there is no basis in argument for
a continued existence of the individual human soul after the death of the body. For
Averroes in the Long Commentary, then, the ontology of the human soul does not entail
any post-mortem existence for individual human beings.

38
Long Commentary, 160–161; tr 128.
39
Long Commentary, 407; tr. 322.
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

In sum, Averroes has no provision for an afterlife for individual human beings or
human souls in any of his three commentaries on the De Anima.

2. The Ontology of the Soul in Fas·l al-maqāl and Tahāfut

al-tahāfut
In the Fas·l al-maqāl, Averroes boldly asserts that the denial of the existence of the
afterlife is unbelief but adds that the learned thinker who commits error regarding this
difficult question should be excused so long as the afterlife is not denied. Still, he then
says,
For anyone not adept in science, it is obligatory to take [descriptions of the next life]
in their apparent sense; for him, it is unbelief to interpret them because it leads to
unbelief. That is why we are of the opinion that, for anyone among the people
whose duty it is to have faith in the apparent sense, interpretation is unbelief
because it leads to unbelief. Anyone adept in interpretation who divulges that to
him calls him to unbelief; and one who calls to unbelief is an unbeliever.40

He then adds later in the text of the Fas·l al-maqāl, “it is obligatory that interpretations
be established only in books using demonstrations, because if they are in the books of
demonstrations only one from among the people of demonstration will get their hands
on them.”41 In this Averroes does not deny in an absolute way the possibility of an
interpretation of the scriptural account of the afterlife which considers the doctrine in a
non-literal way. Such an interpretation can only be permitted to the learned people of
demonstration because of the likelihood that unbelief would ensue for the unlearned
upon hearing of such a view.42
A similar view is found in the Tahāfut al-tahāfut, as indicated earlier. There Averroes
holds that religions are obligatory and that they “seek the instruction of the masses
generally” in praiseworthy principles “which incite the masses to the performance of
virtuous acts” since religion “is primarily concerned with the things in which the masses
participate.”43 Philosophers also regard religions to be obligatory “since they lead toward
wisdom in a way universal to all human beings.” Nevertheless, the philosophers hold the
complete happiness attainable by human beings is possible for philosophers only thanks
to “participation with the class of the masses,” no doubt simply because of the needs that
must be met for the full attainment of the philosophical life. Religion, he writes, through
its “actions and regulations” as well as “the prayers in our religion hold men back from
ignominy and wickedness,” gives rise to “the existence of virtues which are realized
through moral action and through practice,” as the philosophers would put it. The
religious doctrine of the afterlife is powerfully conducive to this virtuous conduct by the

40
Fas·l al-maqāl, 21–22.
41
Fas·l al-maqāl, 21–22.
42
Fas·l al-maqāl, 21–22.
43
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 582, tr. 360; 584, tr. 361; and 582, tr. 360.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

masses and does so through vivid imagery sufficient to move human beings to right
action and moral conduct. “Thus to represent the beyond in material images is more
appropriate than purely spiritual representation.”44
However, while the issue of the afterlife functions in the realm of practical
philosophy and right action since “the philosophers believe that religious laws are
necessary political arts,”45 nevertheless “according to them it is a speculative problem
(min al-masā’il al-naz·ariyya).”46 That is, the reality of the afterlife is not something
proven in practical philosophy since the practical is about action and what ought to be
done, while it belongs to the speculative, or, better, the theoretical sciences to establish
by philosophical argumentation the existence of the afterlife. Here in the Tahāfut
al-tahāfut no such proof is provided even though the concern of this last section of the
work is to reply to the accusation of al-Ghazali “that the philosophers deny bodily
resurrection.”47 Instead, the focus is not the issue of the existence of the afterlife but
rather on the issue of denial; and the response affirms that the philosophers do not set
out such a denial since it would undermine the creation of the virtuous society upon
which depends the highest fulfillment of human existence available only to the
philosophers, namely “full happiness.”
Both the Fas·l al-maqāl and the Tahāfut al-tahāfut are dialectical works according to
the scheme of classification provided in the former; in the latter he explicitly describes the
work itself as non-demonstrative.48 And even if the former is in some sense both a
dialectical religious treatise with an underlying philosophical foundation and argument,49
still neither work contains a philosophical proof for the immortality of soul or the
existence of an afterlife. Rather, each stresses the practical value for the masses and for the
philosopher of maintaining the doctrine as part of a complex of religious beliefs essential
for societal order and virtue. Nevertheless, the Tahāfut al-tahāfut hints at the possibility
of another account in theoretical philosophy and the Fas·l al-maqāl explicitly states that
the issue is something over which there is disagreement. That theoretical account is
recounted in detail earlier in this article. But in the Fas·l al-maqāl Averroes curiously raises
the question of the doctrine of the afterlife as likeness and image.
After insisting that indications of God’s existence, the reality of prophetic missions
and “happiness in the hereafter and misery in the hereafter” must be known and affirmed
by all levels of people, the rhetorical, dialectical and demonstrative,50 Averroes goes on

44
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 583–5; tr. 360–61.
45
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 581; tr. 359.
46
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 587; tr. 362.
47
Tahāfut al-tahāfut, 580; tr. 359.
48
See note 5 above.
49
This is my contention indicated in “‘Truth does not contradict truth’: Averroes and the Unity of Truth,”
Topoi 19.1 (2000): 3–16, and “Ibn Rushd / Averroes and ‘Islamic’ Rationalism,” in Medieval Encounters.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 15 (2009): 125–135.
50
Fas·l al-maqāl, 18.
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

to speak of hidden things “known only by demonstration” and the apparent sense and
the inner sense of scripture. He writes,
God has been gracious to His servants for whom there is no path by means of
demonstration — either due to their innate dispositions, their habits, or their lack of
facilities for education — by coining for them likenesses and similarities of these
[hidden things] and calling them to assent by means of those likenesses, since it is
possible for assent to those likenesses to come about by means of the indications
shared by all — I mean, the dialectical and the rhetorical. This is the reason for the
Law being divided into an apparent sense and an inner sense. For the apparent
sense [of the Law] is those likenesses coined for those meanings, and the inner sense
is those meanings that reveal themselves only to those adept in demonstration.51

That is, there are interpretations available only to adepts of demonstration, the
philosophers, while for the other two groups revelation has provided “likenesses and
similarities” of the true understanding. Of those others who assent in the absence of
demonstration, some use imagination at the level of a belief in corporeality (jismiyya)
while others rise a bit higher to the thinking of God as being in a place. The same would
seem to hold of the afterlife in their restricted understandings. And in fact there may even
be disagreement among the philosophers since their intellectual abilities in demonstra-
tion may vary in rank. For Averroes, “With respect to this question [of the next life and
its conditions], it is an evident matter that they belong to the sort about which there is
disagreement.”52 Yet, even in the Fas·l al-maqāl he is unwilling to leave this as a matter
of disagreement and uncertainty. He writes, as indicated earlier, “it is obligatory that
interpretations be established only in books using demonstrations.”53

3. Conclusion
As indicated immediately above, Averroes clearly states in his Fas·l al-maqāl that
human beings who are only capable of assent to teachings on the basis of rhetorical or
dialectical means must rely on inferior modes of understanding dominated by corpore-
ality and imagination. Those modes provide likenesses and similarities but not true
understanding of their object, the truth and reality of what is depicted in the religious
teaching on resurrection and the afterlife. That truth and reality is not to be found in his
dialectical Tahāfut al-tahāfut either. Rather, it is to be found, writes Averroes, in the
“books using demonstrations,” a view stated in both the Fas·l al-maqāl and the Tahāfut
al-tahāfut. This indicates, then, that the truth of the issue is to be found in his
philosophical commentaries such as those on De Anima examined earlier.54 Yet, as we

51
Fas·l al-maqāl, 19.
52
Fas·l al-maqāl, 20.
53
Fas·l al-maqāl, 21.
54
The philosophical commentaries by Averroes are not merely derivative accounts of Aristotle’s views.
In the case of the first of his long commentaries, the Long Commentary on the De Anima (see n. 9
above), Averroes makes it clear that the views expressed are his own, particularly his unique
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have seen, those commentaries contain no such demonstration and in fact contain
teachings entailing the complete corruption of the human being without any provision
for or entailment of an additional or continuing existence of any sort after death. How
can these explicit albeit very different teachings be understood coherently?
One seemingly possible way to understand the view of Averroes might be to hold
that he believed the religious doctrine of the afterlife simply on faith without demon-
strative proof. Certainly he repeatedly insists that this is a principle of religion that all
must affirm regardless of varying abilities of the rhetorical, dialectical or demonstrative
classifications of human beings. If there is any absolute proof of the afterlife, that
proof could in principle only be found in the demonstrative works of Averroes. But
given that no such proof is found in those works, one might conclude that the lack of
proof is just a matter of the imperfection of human reasoning abilities to provide the
needed arguments. Yet that is unacceptable, since it does not reflect the explicit
reasoned analyses in the demonstrative works of philosophical psychology by Aver-
roes, for his accounts there are not aporetic but rather in their reasoning they entail
the conclusion that human beings perish wholly at death. Recall that the Short
Commentary held for the material intellect to be in the forms of the imagination and
thereby dependent upon imagination which is perishable; the Middle Commentary
held the material intellect to be dependent for its existence and individuation on the
human person to which it belongs; and the Long Commentary held only the separate
Agent Intellect and the separate Material Intellect to exist imperishably, not the human
individual.
A different possibility — but one equally unacceptable — would be to say that
Averroes held the reasoning of the so-called demonstrative works of psychology to yield
true conclusions. Hence, the view of Averroes would be that the human soul is
perishable and there is no afterlife. This would seem then to require full dissimulation on
his part, particularly in his statement in the Fas·l al-maqāl where he affirmed the absolute
character and necessity that understanding of certain principles of religion are “possible
for everyone,” that is, possible for all human beings, humans at all three of the levels of
understanding or modes of assent. The three examples which he provides are God’s
existence, that of prophetic missions, and happiness and misery in the afterlife. He then
writes,

interpretation of the De Anima which he considered to be a novel but accurate account of Aristotle. He
writes, “Since there are all those things [which can be raised regarding the material intellect], for this
reason it seemed [best] to me to write what seemed to me to be the case on this topic. If what appears
to me is not complete, it will be a start for a complete account. So I ask my brothers seeing this
exposition to write down their doubts and perhaps in that way what is true regarding this will be found
out, if I have not yet found [it]. If I have found [it], as I suppose, then it will be clarified through those
questions. For truth, as Aristotle says, is fitting and gives testimony to itself in every way.” Long
Commentary, 399; tr. 315.
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 Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

That is because the three sorts of indications due to which no one is exempted from
assenting to what he is responsible for being cognizant of — I mean, the rhetorical,
dialectical, and demonstrative indications — lead to these three roots.55

Neither of these possibilities is acceptable on its face. The affirmation of the afterlife
in the dialectical religious works and the denial of the afterlife found in those
philosophical conclusions are contradictory and incompossible. In light of that other
possibilities may be suggested. Perhaps in this matter Averroes lived with full psycho-
logical cognitive dissonance on the matter of the afterlife, both affirming it and denying
it. Like the other two possibilities this too seems beyond the acceptable since it would
involve a profound acceptance of a theory of double truth, something which he clearly
and explicitly rejected in the Fas·l al-maqāl, the Long Commentary on the De Anima, and
in his Middle Commentary on the Prior Analytics with the affirmation of the unity of
truth: “Truth does not contradict truth but rather is consistent with it and bears witness
to it,” a near quotation from Book One, Chapter 32, of the Arabic version of Aristotle’s
Prior Analytics, as I have shown elsewhere.56
In the Fas·l al-maqāl Averroes asserts the necessity of holding for the existence of the
afterlife on the part of the philosophers as well as on the part of those of the rhetorical
and dialectical groupings, as indicated above. But in that same work he provides
precisely the methodology required for the resolution of the present issue.
In the initial pages of the Fas·l al-maqāl Averroes quickly establishes that the
Religious Law calls human beings to reflection (naz·ar ) on existing things as indica-
tions of their Artisan, God. That reflection (i’tibār ) by means of syllogistic (qiyās)
which is both religiously and intellectually grounded is reasoned to take place
through the most perfect (atamm) sort of syllogistic, namely demonstration (burhān).
Here Aristotelian demonstration differs from the other methods for generating assent
— the emotive persuasion of rhetoric and assumption-based reasoning of dialectic —
in that it causes assent to what is true per se and in virtue of itself, and not per
accidens as is the case for the other methods of assent. Averroes then sets out the
principle of the unity of truth to forestall any possibility of a doctrine of double truths,
one for religion and one for demonstrative philosophical reasoning: “demonstrative
reflection does not lead to differing with what is set down in the Law. Truth does not
contradict truth but rather is consistent with it and bears witness to it.”57 As a
consequence, when considering the possibility of a case in which the apparent sense
of Religious Law regarding some matter differs from a philosophically demonstrated
conclusion about that matter, Averroes clearly asserts the primacy of the demonstrated
conclusion with the result that the apparent sense of the Religious Law must be
interpreted in another, non-literal way. He writes, “And we firmly affirm that, when-

55
Fas·l al-maqāl, 18.
56
See the article cited in note 1 above.
57
Fas·l al-maqāl, 8–9. In the second sentence I replace the translation of Butterworth with my own.
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 The Muslim World • Volume 102 • July/October 2012

ever demonstration leads to something differing from the apparent sense of the Law,
that apparent sense admits of interpretation according to the rules of interpretation in
Arabic.”58
This methodology carefully spelled out by Averroes in the Fas·l al-maqāl when
applied to the issue of the afterlife in conjunction with the conclusions of the
demonstrative accounts of the human soul found in Averroes’s commentaries on the De
Anima leads to a conclusion which Averroes never voiced explicitly in his religious or
philosophical writings, namely, the denial of the afterlife. However, in the Fas·l al-maqāl
after upholding the eternity of the world and the denial of God’s knowledge of
particulars as well as of universals in clearly and carefully reasoned ways in response to
the charges of unbelief by al-Ghazālı̄, Averroes provides remarks on the issue of the
afterlife which are far from clear in their meaning.
While detailed consideration of his response to al-Ghazālı̄ regarding the charge of
unbelief for the denial of resurrection and the afterlife is beyond the scope of this
article, it is something I will take up on another occasion together with analysis of
Averroes’s understanding of the functions of language in philosophical and religious
discourses.59

58
Fas·l al-maqāl, 9.
59
That study will take into account one additional work, his treatise of kalām, al-Kashf ‘an manāhij
al-adilla fı̄ ‘aqā’id al-milla (The Explanation of the Sorts of Proofs in the Doctrines of Religion). See Ibn
Rushd, al-Kashf ‘an manāhij al-adillah fı̄ ‘aqā’id al-milla, Muh·ammad ‘Ābid al-Jābirı̄, ed. Second
edition (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Wah·dat al-‘Arabiyya, 2001). A recent English translation is available
in Faith and Reason in Islam. Averroes’ Exposition of Religious Arguments, tr. I. Najjar (Oxford: One
World, 2001). I am glad to express my thanks to Prof. Luis X. López-Farjeat (Universidad Panamericana,
Mexico City), Prof. Andrea Robiglio (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), and doctoral student Katja Krause
(King’s College London) for valuable suggestions for the improvement of this article. I also thank the
editor for his suggestions and patience.
596 © 2012 Hartford Seminary.